MP for Laven­tille East/Mor­vant and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Adri­an Leonce be­lieves the Gov­ern­ment will not adopt the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion’s (SRC) re­port propos­ing wage hikes for 950 state of­fi­cials across 325 cat­e­gories of of­fices at this time.

It is the first clear re­sponse from a gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial re­gard­ing the re­port since it was laid in the Low­er House on Fri­day.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia out­side the Red House on his way to Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Leonce said, “I don’t think it’s go­ing to hap­pen. Not at this point in time.” Asked if this was the po­si­tion of the Cab­i­net, he said, “No, no, no, I am not in the Cab­i­net.”

Leonce, as a min­is­ter with­in a min­istry, is not a mem­ber of the Cab­i­net, which is the sole law­ful au­thor­i­ty re­spon­si­ble for de­cid­ing whether to adopt the rec­om­men­da­tions of an SRC re­port.

Nev­er­the­less, it is a le­gal re­quire­ment for all SRC re­ports to be laid be­fore Par­lia­ment.

Among the of­fi­cials ex­pect­ed to get in­creas­es if the re­port is adopt­ed are the Pres­i­dent, Prime Min­is­ter, Op­po­si­tion Leader, Chief Jus­tice, Po­lice and Pris­ons com­mis­sion­ers, and oth­ers.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Symon De No­bri­ga, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, Labour Min­is­ter Stephen Mc Clashie, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning evad­ed SRC-re­lat­ed ques­tions from the me­dia out­side Par­lia­ment.

Asked to re­spond, Man­ning said, “I can­not,” while Deyals­ingh urged pa­tience, say­ing “Wait for the de­bate.” Mc­Clashie de­ferred re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the Prime Min­is­ter and Fi­nance Min­is­ter.

How­ev­er, a few op­po­si­tion MPs have con­demned the pro­pos­al, call­ing it an af­front to the work­ing class giv­en the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer’s four per cent of­fer to pub­lic sec­tor work­ers.

“We have thou­sands of pub­lic ser­vants who have been told to tight­en their belts over sev­er­al years, and now you want to give the prime min­is­ter an 80-some­thing-thou­sand dol­lar salary, and you want to give him a mil­lion dol­lars in back pay? I am just amazed that a gov­ern­ment could even con­sid­er such a thing,” Ameen said, sug­gest­ing that Dr Row­ley is wor­ried he may lose the gen­er­al elec­tion due next year and is seek­ing a large pay­out.

She added that while she would ap­pre­ci­ate an in­crease, she will stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the work­ing-class pop­u­la­tion. “Al­though I would love to have more mon­ey to do more things with­in my con­stituen­cy that I do with­out my own pock­et, I don’t mind not get­ting an in­crease giv­en the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try.”

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal would on­ly say that his view will be ex­pressed in Par­lia­ment, sim­i­lar to Barataria/San Juan MP Sad­dam Ho­sein and Ca­roni East MP Rishad Seecha­ran.

Mean­while, the Op­po­si­tion Leader has not com­ment­ed on the pro­posed in­crease, which could triple her salary.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor:

MPs should not have purview over body

set­ting their salaries

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Suni­ty Ma­haraj is call­ing for changes to the Con­sti­tu­tion to en­sure that par­lia­men­tar­i­ans should not have any purview over the body re­spon­si­ble for set­ting their salaries.

Ma­haraj was speak­ing with ra­dio pre­sen­ter Satesh Ma­habir on Free­dom 106.5FM yes­ter­day. She said the time has come for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form to en­sure that the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion’s (SRC) is not un­der the purview of par­lia­men­tar­i­ans.

She sug­gest­ed that a British mod­el of an In­de­pen­dent Par­lia­men­tary Stan­dards Au­thor­i­ty be adopt­ed. “The pow­er to make that de­ci­sion re­sides in the Cab­i­net, not with an in­de­pen­dent au­thor­i­ty, and I be­lieve that’s the heart of the prob­lem be­cause I do think that you need some dis­tance, and you need the de­ci­sion to lie else­where, in an in­de­pen­dent au­thor­i­ty,” she ex­plained.

Ma­haraj added that while the SRC re­viewed pri­vate sec­tor re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­ages and sought to com­pare them to elect­ed of­fi­cials (such as a CEO to a Prime Min­is­ter), there is no role that ac­tu­al­ly com­pares to these po­si­tions.

“It’s a sala­cious ar­gu­ment to com­pare one to an­oth­er,” she stat­ed. She urged the Gov­ern­ment, Op­po­si­tion and civ­il so­ci­ety to hold dis­cus­sions on the SRC re­port to se­ri­ous­ly weigh the pub­lic’s opin­ion, es­pe­cial­ly in an elec­tion year.

Ma­haraj added, “The lead­ers of po­lit­i­cal par­ties and the lead­ers of cham­bers of com­merce can pay a use­ful func­tion by them­selves or­gan­is­ing their own mem­bers and do­ing a thor­ough dis­cus­sion to help lift the lev­el of pub­lic dis­course. This is what they should be do­ing—they them­selves are not do­ing these things”.

She said this al­so ap­plies to church­es.

On the pub­lic furore over the four per cent of­fered to pub­lic sec­tor work­ers while state of­fi­cials can like­ly re­ceive ex­or­bi­tant in­creas­es, Ma­haraj said, “Do so, don’t like so,” adding that it is the prin­ci­ple that counts.